Deicide’s Steve Asheim on the Departure of Jack Owen: “He Kind of Left One Day and Just Never Came Back”

Why did guitarist Jack Owen part ways with Deicide last fall? That’s not the set-up for a joke — I’m seriously asking. ‘Cause neither Deicide nor Owen has said anything about it since it happened, so the cause behind Owen leaving the band has remained a mystery…

…until now! Deicide drummer Steve Asheim has finally shared the band’s side of the story with Metal Wani (transcription via Metal Injection):

“We were just kind of writing the [new] record, and we were going over the songs. Me and Glen, we were, like, ‘We wanna redo the songs.’ It’s like we had completed them — about nine or twelve, whatever how many songs. They were all right, but we weren’t really psyched about them. So we decided to rewrite them. And Jack didn’t really like it. And he kind of left one day and just never came back. So that was that. He’s not on [the new album]. I haven’t talked to the guy in almost a year.”

So that sounds… awkward. It also sounds like there’s some information missing… Did Owen feel like the way Benton and Asheim handled the rewrites was rude? Was he just really attached to the material before it was rewritten? I am now even more curious to hear Owen’s side of the story, should he ever care to share it.

In the meantime, Owen has reunited with his former Cannibal Corpse bandmate, Chris Barnes, in Six Feet Under, while Deicide have recruited Monstrosity’s Mark English to take his place.